Incidents of government overreaching have come so “fast and furious” over the past several years that the most recent one seems largely to have gotten lost in the blur.

But if you live in or near farm country, as I do in upstate New York, you may have been amazed to see that the federal government, in the guise of its Department of Labor, recently set about abolishing the family farm.

That clearly would have been the result if 85 pages of new regulations proposed by the DOL last year had gone into effect. According to my local newspaper, the Saratogian,the proposed regulations “would have prohibited teens younger than 16 years old from doing many standard farm chores and limited their ability to work with livestock, which not only threatened 4-H programs, but the future of family farming itself.”

In other words, it would have been a “twofer” for Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and her swashbuckling bureaucrats in Washington — knocking off both family farms and the 4-H in one blow! Farm-country outcry killed the new diktat just before it was to take effect, and it was buried “for the rest of the Obama administration” by the ostensibly embarrassed White House.

As astonishing as this exercise in arrogance is, it’s only one part of a pattern. Consider:

The GSA scandal, in which bureaucrats charged with improving government efficiency decided to treat themselves to a hugely expensive lark in Vegas, of all places, which the president himself had once made politically incorrect.

The Secret Service scandal, in which agents got caught, literally, with their pants down among foreign floozies.

The Environmental Protection Agency scandal, in which one of the agency’s regional bigs was found to have told his minions to “crucify,” like the conquering Romans, gas and oil companies at random to terrify them into submission.

The Justice Department scandal known as “Fast and Furious,” in which drug traffickers south of the border received lethal firepower in what many believe was a bid to discredit the right to bear arms in this country.

The National Labor Relations Board’s telling a major manufacturer, Boeing, that it couldn’t open a new plant in a “right-to-work” state.

The ongoing scandal of the Energy Department’s backing a whole string of losers with taxpayer funds under the rubric of “alternative energy.”

The ObamaCare overstretch in which the president snapped his fingers at the backlash over his contraception mandate (itself a major and gratuitous blow against separation of church and state) and said, in effect, “the insurance companies will pay for it,” without citing constitutional authority.

The EPA’s seeking to bankrupt the coal industry apparently on “global warming” authority.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which shocked civil libertarians by ordering colleges to use the relatively lax “preponderance of evidence” standard against males accused of rape on campus or risk losing federal funds.

The list goes on and on. In the age of Obama, it looks like government increasingly is becoming a kind of “black swan” machine.

Black swans, as explained in the best-selling book by Nasem Taleb, are events so far out of the ordinary as to be massively disruptive because they can hardly be imagined, much less planned for. A recent example was the financial meltdown of 2008-2009 precipitated by securities that were thought to be safe and even “insured” (by the government, in many cases, in the guise of its mortgage packagers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac); a more recent example came last year when an earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused not only massive flooding but a nuclear disaster in Japan.

Note the distinction between these two examples, however; one was largely an outgrowth of government policy while the other was due to an act of God (or nature, or chance, as you prefer). What we’re seeing increasingly with the Obama administration is that black swan events are being manufactured and loosed upon us by our government itself. It’s no consolation that they’re coming in the name of the progressive agenda of “helping” us. It’s of even less consolation to consider that the president apparently believes he’ll have “more flexibility” to do as he pleases after November.

In the case of the fatal farm regulations what’s perhaps most shocking is that such a ham-handed attempt would have been made in the first place. Are there no adults at the Department of Labor to tell the juveniles “This isn’t going to fly, and would create huge problems for the president in an election year anyway. So get back in your room — now!” If the idea behind such moves isn’t disruption for its own sake — or to administer lessons on the power of the government to whatever it wants until we all “get it” — what is it?

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Kimberly Strassel writes that Al Armendariz, the EPA procurator who was going to crucify oil and gas companies just to let them know who’s boss, is hardly the exception to the rule within the Obama administration but rather exactly the kind of federal enforcer the president wants. In other words, Obama considers him a feature — not a bug — in his plan to totally transform America.

But if she’s correct, that would mean that Obama-style government could no longer be considered a “black swan” machine. Why? Because these disruptions are planned, not random.

54 Comments, 25 Threads

Your last sentence, which I take as partly ironic, may, indeed, relatize the Black Swan effect. How can the unforeseen of a Black Swan be entailed if interventions are planned. Well, the family farmers of NY State were like the happy turkey in Taleb’s illustration. 1000 days of good food and tomorrow, Thanksgiving, … -> Black Swan death. Each group to be controlled is like that turkey. It never knows “when”!

But there is another Black Swan that you have overlooked, even in your example of the man-made crash of 2008. Bill Clinton started the housing bubble in 1994. At that time I bought a dwelling and sold it in 2000 (before Bush W. took office) for a 470% profit. I was mesmerized and invested my profits in Germany with a German company that, alas, lost 760 million euros after 2008 and is now struggling for existence. I could not foresee the Black Swan of 2008, nor the non-Talebian bankers who assured me of the safety of my investment. What is the point of this tale?

There was at least since 1994 PLANNED intervention by the gov. into the market which had years later an unforeseen consequence of destructive magnitude. Let us say that every group knows well in advance that it is the next turkey on the Obama intervention plate. But the Clinton/Bush intervention, taken as a paradigm, was also well planned (blessed by his majesty, Greenspan). So, if one well plan intervention BY the gov. can have unforseen and not foreseeable Black Swan consequences, who is to say (following Taleb’s thought) what a catastrophy the destruction of the family farm might have had. Maybe NYers would have ended up as surprised turkies that have no food to buy.

I conclude that you conclusion, while correct to a humourous point, is false. The Black Swan lives on in the interferring hands of the Obama bureaucratic minions and, hence, remains structurally there. The planners themselves are naught but a pack of meddling turkies. Let us call such a permanent danger the Solyndra Swan.

Good points, but your dates are a little off. Having Fannie and Freddie guaranty sub- prime mortgages all the way back to Carter. Gradually grew over the years with congress increasing amounts through Clinton and Bush years. George tried once or twice to get Fannie and Freddie audited financially, but Dodd swore he’d filibuster “all night” to avoid that and Frank said it was all a plot to destroy the program that had helped all these people. Even though F&F guaranteed them, the financial firms were worried about about taking on more bad debt, and SEIU and Acorn (Union outfits) picketed there offices to great applause from the media and even picketed the houses of the senior people. Dodd finally ended the charade by saying the saying publicly that Countrywide is bankrupt.

I cannot for the life of me understand how so many claim to not have foreseen the 2008financial debacle. I knew it was coming! How can you talk about a bubble without considering the likelihood of its ultimate burst?

Dear Nancy, I confess I was blind, but a blindness based on “apparent” easy profit (by Jupiter, I had hauled in 470% profit in just 6 years) and I invested with forethought here in Germany in a Germany company. I did want to protect myself from the ups and downs of the American market. Germans, so I thought, are more protective of money and less willing to take silly risks. How was I supposed to know that a burting bubble in America would bubble over onto a land far, far away bursting its economic life apart. It is true that many a German bank, often unbenownst to its depositers, invested heavily in the housing market in America and, well, got slaughtered. But before becoming part of the burst, I needed reason to doubt. Well, the “conservative” German banks were plaughing into the American market. Why should I not be blind, a silly professor of useless German philosophy, when the incarnations of the World Spirit such as Greenspan and Barnanke saw no “boom” to the bubble. So, I was like Taleb’s turkey, I was set up for the slaughter of the Black Swan of 2008.

Moreover, in those years my news from the USA was CNN filtered and German tv and newspapers get their news about America from that “objective” source called the mainstream press. So, I plead ignorance based on faith that does not move stock markets. Whether my guilt will consign me to a monetary purgatory or not, lies not in my hands. If the analyses of David Goldman hold, I better get ready for fiscal fire and brimstone.

Besides, I was dedicating myself to the heady subject matter of wine, women and Hegelian philosophy. With that mixture, who wants to worry about bubbles bursting, less they be from a champagne bottle. Can you expect other than blindness from a man?

Well stated. I returned to California in 2006 to see with dismay the irrational value of housing to real income that had run up while living on the East Coast (where I heard every week a radio show that expounded on the wonders of flipping condos in Florida).

Anyone who understands that, eventually, inflated housing runs out of income earners at the bottom to keep the push going ( as I pointed out to developers in 1990 as a young planner in California at the peak of the last bubble there) could have seen this coming.

I warned my young mortage-officer landlord, that he was too young to remenber that banks failed in the 1980s due to a housing crash in Texas.

And a Supreme Court that has long lost the sense of the Constitution: a Federal government of limited and defined powers. SCOTUS is a failed institution when it comes to adherence to the Constitution. Note that it has become more political as time has passed: the split opinions are predictable via the party of the president who appointed them.

We need to lengthen our time frame. Go back to the two prime movers of the Progressive era. T. Roosevelt and W. Wilson this was the beginning of the mess we have today. Step by step we have been slowly choked into submission. Sure, now and then we had some real Constitutionalists along the way, but admin by admin we have been led to the gallows and now we are at the tip over point. We either win this next election or we are headed for the ash heap of history. Obama has sent us over the hump and we must claw our way back to the Constitution or all is lost.
Read some history and visualize what is happening to the Nation. If you want to find the real culperts of this mess take a look at England in 1694, this was the real beginnng. It is all about MONEY and POWER. Thieving Bankers and Crooked Politicians joined together at the hip. Keep your powder dry for we may need it in the not to distance future…

I’m with J.W.: what we’ve been seeing for the last 3 1/2 years isn’t a flock of Black Swans (i.e., unforeseen consequences) but pure leftist arrogance on parade. Each of the cited Obama scandals are the result of progressive policy taken to an extreme.

Watergate was terminal for Nixon mostly because it happened in isolation: the political actors had time to “savor” and exploit the misdeeds over months without distraction. The scandals of the Obama administration are occurring so quickly and in such number that we lose concentration and none are resolved.

I find it hard to believe that the “flock” of Obama scandals is accidental. This is much too similar to the Cloven-Piven strategy (overwhelm the system to bring down the country). The Left’s goal is to destroy the rule of law by saturation, and given the muted reaction to Obama’s amnesty outrage, I fear the strategy is working.

Both Jeff and the mysterious #1389 miss the point of black swan theory of Taleb. In Taleb’s example of the turkey, the turkey does not have the slightest idea of his fate. However, the butcher does. This type of black swan is relative to the knower. One might expect that the Obama-ites will initiate ever more interventions. I believe that as a piece of white swan wisdom. However, how many, when, what group first, etc. Maybe the “regulators” themselves do not yet know all the things to regulate. There are just so many of them that it hurts. There is uncertainity here, even with those who plan interventionS. The hapless farmer or coal mine owner or … does not know really “if”, let alone “when”. So they are very vaguely informed turkies. But there is another type of black swan that takes place without reference to any knower (with the possible exception of an all knowing God).

The normal way of “predicting” unusual events is a function of the bell curve. It was the bell curve that a banker used to advise me about possible loss. But, Taleb, along with his friend and colleague, Mandelbrot, have taken up “chaos theory”, which throws out the bell curve calculations totally. It is possible to come up with chaos formulas that even do not let one predict the next number. Chaos theory has interested many a quantum physicist as that seems to be the world (sic) he is examining. And, if I accept the epistemological critique of von Hayek relative to the ability of the planner to obtain sufficient info in order plan rationally (and I do accept this thesis), then the economic world reveals itself essentially to evince a certain amount of chaos.

Both Jeff and #1389 are correct about the irristible nature of Obama’s drive to plan and its correlative need to regulate. I ask, however, both doubters of Taleb if they, two years ago, let alone one year ago, could predict the family farm rules? Can you two stalwards predict the next business which will be subject to a take over, not to mention, the next twenty attempts. If that is not possible, then you are no more than a partially informed turkey, i.e., you do not know if the other couple of million brothers of the same feather will be the next on the avoricious plate of Obama regulations. Ignorance can be bliss until…

The author refers to all of this as “arrogance”. It is not. It is absolute brilliance that we dolts just can’t appreciate. You see, an important point is being missed. Obama, in His infinite wisdom, is opening the floodgates to all kinds of new and rewarding employment opportunities! Think of all of the CPAs, accountants, bookkeepers, tax consultants and lawyers, financial advisors, administrative clerks, revenue agents, tax fund managers, tax preparation jobs and trainers, auditors, etc., etc. whose livelihoods are directly related to the Internal Revenue Service(s) and their monstrous and asinine tax codes. Now multiply just this one testament to government inefficiency, waste, and fraud by hundreds of similarly structured agencies and the possibility of having near zero unemployment becomes a reality! Open your thinking to all of the wonders that Obama’s actions portend for our future as we march “Forward!”. Here is just one exciting possibility. Whole communities will materialize around law school campuses, training centers for functionaries, and jails to house regulation violators. Building these centers and jails and the communities that surround them will bring explosive growth to the construction industry! And that industry will have to be overseen by a myriad of governmental agencies with their armies of inspectors, auditors, enforcers, paper movers, and on and on. Also, just imagine the number of Spanish speaking bureaucrats that will have to be hired in order to facilitate the regulatory society that will be our future. See the brilliance of the amnesty efforts? The possibilities are endless as America is transformed. Catch up to the One’s magnificent vision for us all and quit bitchin’! Give Obama another four years. Everyone that wants a job will have one! Regulating everything and producing nothing.

You paint an accurate picture of the ideal society envisioned those whose mission is to trammel and strangle this country into some poor mewling and puking dependent class.

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion —
when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission
from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who
deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by
graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against
them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being
rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your
society is doomed.”
~Ayn Rand

The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.
~Eric Hoffer

The dictum of the statist government (per Ronaldus Maximus):
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.

Obama’s worldview seems to evince this grotesquery. He is either stupid, or evil. Stupid because he doesn’t understand the horrendous dampening effect of administrative burden on production. Or evil because he does understand it, and desires it. The more I see of this Administration, the more that the inhumane Cloward-Piven strategy seems to be the steering agenda.

None of those events are “Black Swans”, they’re just routine, run-of-the-mill, ordinary bureaucratic screw-ups. And, frankly, much of the blame falls on Bush for the massive growth in government during his terms. I don’t see the failures as a being a result of Bambi’s leftist policies, they’re the normal failures of bloated bureaucracy. Had McCain won the election we’d be reading stories about failures, perhaps different failures but failures none the less. What we’re seeing is the result of exceeding the “Maximum Productive Level of Government”. The country is failing, just like any company fails, because we’ve passed the tipping point of bureaucratic bloat.

Romney has an opportunity to ramp up a “That government is best which governs least” campaign focused on drastically cutting the size of government. It matters not if the government is implementing right-wing or left-wing policies if the government is so bloated that the country can’t function. The examples in the article aren’t Black Swans, they’re simply the result of bureaucrats doing what bureaucrats do. What we’re seeing is why the Founders tried to limit the size and scope of the central government. We need a reorganization and Romney needs to start talking about slashing the bloat.

The government has been bloating since they invented the income tax. Before we qualify Bush’s contribution relative to Obama’s let us not discount the 39 czars of Obama who did not have to pass congressional approval and oversight.

The Environmental Protection Agency scandal, in which one of the agency’s regional bigs was found to have told his minions to “crucify,” like the conquering Romans, gas and oil companies at random to terrify them into submission…The EPA’s seeking to bankrupt the coal industry apparently on “global warming” authority

The EPA is especially out of control, run by one of Barack’s many ignorant (although faithful to the death) women, Lisa Jackson.

If the idea behind such moves isn’t disruption for its own sake — or to administer lessons on the power of the government to whatever it wants until we all “get it” — what is it?…Al Armendariz, the EPA procurator who was going to crucify oil and gas companies just to let them know who’s boss, is hardly the exception to the rule within the Obama administration but rather exactly the kind of federal enforcer the president wants.

That’s correct, ignorant enforcers like Al are a feature, not a bug.

And what about the EPA flying over mid-west farms, looking for violators of their arcane water rules ?

Under Barack Obama and his chosen appointees, this nation is being administered by subversive idiots, all the way up the food chain.

What we’re seeing increasingly with the Obama administration is that black swan events are being manufactured and loosed upon us by our government itself.

Our community-organizer-in-chief is steeped in Saul’s Rules.

Alinsky’s rule # 10:

“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”

Are there no adults at the Department of Labor to tell the juveniles…

Sec’y of Labor, Hilda Solis, is another extreme idiotlogue.

These people were chosen for being rubber stamps for this president’s ideology, for being on board with the mission to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

What is the disclaimer? “Past performance is not a predictor . . .” That said, the devastation and the Tsunami that caused it were predictable! It had happened before in that location. Further, the placement and design of the power plant ensured that their lack of understanding of earthquake/tsunami dynamics would work against them. One of the axioms of real science is the more we learn, the more we discover how little we know. No Black Swan there!

Throughout history every government, that we have records for, has abused its citizens. Some more than others. As power a crews to the government the greater its ability to abuse, and therefore the greater the abuse. No Black Swan here!

What do you mean by predictable? That the Japanese chose a spot where a tsunami took place “before” does, perhaps, cast doubt on the wisdom of the planners. (German law would not have allowed the construction of nuclear plants under the Japanese conditions.) But, what does “before” in itself mean for predicting the next possible tsunami? Can you tell me just exactly when? San Francisco has experienced earthquakes “before”. So, should we simply move everyone out of that town? What about Naples in Italy, where the volcano exploded and wiped out Pompei? Should the Italian gov. relocate the millions of people in the city just because the volcano exploded centuries ago and centuries before that, indeed, with a temporal distance that would suggest that a big boom is overdue? Until one can specify literally ALL the conditions surrounding an event (e.g., all sea currents, weather change, underwater volcano erruptions, etc. etc.) the mere “before” does not mean much. Alas, such measuremens are beyond the power of science. But I suspect that you have failed to understand the relevancy of Nassim Taleb’s work on black swans and prediction, particularly relative to our current fed. gov.

What the theories of the black swan are aimed at, are predictions based upon often precise data, but NEVER fully complete. In some cases paucity of ample information makes the constuctor of buildings into Taleb’s turkey, i.e., a case where proper theory from another point of view might have saved the life of said turkey. (Peter Shiff, following Austrian economics, did predict the the 2008 crash whereas the Fed. misjudged the affair, although the feds had data upon data at hand.) There are situations, e.g., changing modes of taste, where prediction is not possible even from another vantage point. The economic market place is one such area of structural unpredictablity (and this is the point of von Hayek). In both contexts, Taleb has much to say. One lesson that the “social” and “economic” planners of the regulatory rage of the Obama adminsitration should learn (and with white swan certainty I predict will not happen) is the structural limits to intervention and its unforseen consequences. (I note: Should the Obama administration learn that lesson, we would have, I contend, a true Black Swan before our very eyes.)

The point of my reaction to Robert is to avoid polemics. No, the Japanese, who are no mean scientists, did not foresee such a massive tsunami that would not only destroy a city, but eventually strike their nuclear plants. And, pray tell, who of us here in Germany could have predicted that Chancelor Merkel, a stalwart defender of nuclear energy, would literally spook, enact a complete and radical change of nuclear energy use (before the parliament could even discuss the matter, let alone her own political party) and now Germany will spend billions on building an electrical infrastructure in order to get wind energy from the very North conducted to Bavaria in the very South. That is a very BLACK swan!

Beyond polemics, it is necessary to understand the theory proposed by Taleb, particularly when applied to centralization of decision making for the ordering of society. The title of the article is suggestive. Obama’s administration is a Black Swan, and I add, just waiting for unforeseeable consequences.

Good points, Leonard. And, aren’t we a little overdue for the eruption of the super volcano underneath Yellowstone Park? It would make sense to start moving people away from the area, far away, right now. And then there’s the New Madrid fault on the east coast. Wait until that earthquake hits, again. East coast construction doesn’t have the seismic protection features of the west coast.

It’s not just the political appointees. The entire Civil Service needs to be reformed, starting by firing every one.

Notice: the 24 year old son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen is DIRECTOR of “youth attitudes” or some such in HHS or whatever. “Director” is above the top GS15 rating and probably nets him a salary of $140,000 or so plus benefits befitting a Saudi prince.

It’s all so black and white and easy when you don’t know what you’re talking about. First, some definitions: the Civil Service is those classifications of employees who are selected based on their possession of explicit knowledge, skills, and abilities required for an explicitly defined job classification. It is illegal to select or fail to select such employees on the basis of their political and personal affiliations. Appointees are definitionally not in the Civil Service, or merit system, and the only real qualification for most is “knows somebody important.” Most of Comrade Obama’s minions and henchmen have been in the appointee ranks, beyond the reach of Civil Service rules and most beyond the reach of the confirmation process. At least this demonstrates that Democrats, unlike Republicans, understand how Civil Service rules work and know how to get around them.

Now, the above definitions describe the theoretical system, not the real one because it really isn’t safe in the federal government not to be a Democrat unless you’re really, really good at something in which case you can be non-political altogether, but you cannot be a Republican even in the supposedly non-political Civil Service ranks of the GS and some of the GM schedules. There are two reasons for this: first is Republicans couldn’t staff all the appointed positions with loyal, competent Republicans if their lives depended on it, so they applique a few Republicans, some of whom might be competent, in high visibility positions and then leave the Democrats in charge of the rest of the government, and second, the excessive credentialling in the federal service makes it a lock for ideologues with “Studies” degrees and no experience to get federal jobs especially in the regulatory agencies.

The reality is that you aren’t going to “fire” the merit system or Civil Service employees though they can be laid off for lack of work or lack of funds should some Republican put some thought into an actual reorganization of government so that it could actually be run by Republicans. Any Republican in order to govern MUST fire all the political appointees as his hand comes off The Bible or suffer the consequence.

The reality is that you are clueless; merit system and Civil Service employees are the same people. Civil Service employees are a part of the merit system of employment in which employees are selected based on knowlege, skill, and ability rather than political affiliation. I’m not going so far as to say that federal employees are actually selected on ability, AA and often affiliation do get people hired, but it isn’t legal. That said, the reality is that you can only dismiss them for cause, and you aren’t going to do much of that. As I said, you can lay them off for lack of work or lack of funds, but that means some “true conservatives” will have to get elected and then actually know something about running a government so they can begin to scale back the federal monster.

Just to take one of your examples: the NLRB case against Boeing. It was dismissed more than six months ago after the machinists union ratified a contract with Boeing. Collective bargaining worked, problem solved. The rest of your examples are also bogus.

You try to make it sound so straightforward, the NLRB’s illegal interference with the construction of a new Boeing plant in a right-to-work state.

I’d guess the political-appointee-stuffed NLRB knew from the getgo that it didn’t have any legs to stand, but nevertheless messed around with its accusations and threats of a frivolous lawsuit for many months.

You’re either lying with the Party line or you’re appallingly stupid. As anyone who has actually dealt with Democrats and unions knows, Boeing had no choice. Some “friend” of the Administration told Boeing management something along the lines of: “Nice aerospace company you have there, it be a shame if it never got another defense contract, never got another export licence, and all its airplanes were found by the FAA to be unsafe. Of course, you can make sure that doesn’t happen by being reasonable with our friends at IAM.” And Boeing made a contract with a union that can’t hold a majority and its NLRB troubles went away. And in today’s world, that is the way collective bargaining works.

Okay, the choir has been sung to, the sermon has been heard, now what? Every single one of my pro Obama neighbors wants to get their hand-out. They know their isn’t no such thing as a free lunch, but they all think some other body is going to be paying for it, so they want their “share”.

This is what we are up against.

How do you counter freebies with the rubric of hard work and self-sufficiency?

Most of my fellow citizens don’t buy into that rule;they willingly, eagerly trade my silly notions of freedom for “security”.

Tell your neighbors that cultures and societies have been down this road before, with predictably disastrous results. In real time, of course, there is Greece. And Spain. And (almost) Italy and, very likely, soon to be France with Hollande and his newly chosen legislative body in full court press against anything resembling “austerity”.

Of course it won’t do any good so, alternatively, you could move.

“In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.”

That is the problem. They hear of this and that bailout, they think HAMP will save their upside down mortgage. They do not care that no rational actor is going to go long their paper; they want the government to act irrationally and “save” them.
That the government cannot force a cram down on a private lender (except apparently Chrysler bond holders) is immaterial to their aspirations, they want the bankers to be made to pay for their own bad decisions.

Farm-country outcry killed the new diktat just before it was to take effect, and it was buried “for the rest of the Obama administration” by the ostensibly embarrassed White House.

If you think the danger is over, think again. If the Obama administration wants to do this, they will find a way to do it. They’re just waiting until the heat’s off. That’s why it is so very important to get rid of that crew in November, and to keep hammering away at the bureaucratic mountain until it’s reduced to its proper molehill size.

All good insights, but the most cogent is ChrisS and his take on “bloat”. The government is huge and involved in every facet of your life. If you don’t believe me, try and build your own house without the aid of an experienced general contractor. Here in rural oregon we deal with government contiually, down to the simplest of things like cutting our own firewood for heating (~50% of us still use wood heat). Bureacrats decided we need a new “road plan” and proceeded to offer to close the forest roads, roads that taxpayers built initally. Huge outcry! Politicians realized that we’d just “go rogue” on them.
that is where its headed -”just go rogue”.
Beware the phrase, “I just want to make a difference”. That’s the mantra of our new college grads and government bureaucrats.

“In the case of the fatal farm regulations what’s perhaps most shocking is that such a ham-handed attempt would have been made in the first place.”

Not shocking at all. Socialists and Communists were never known for their tact. When they get into power, rules mean nothing, the Constitution means nothing, being fair and reasonable means nothing. When Marxists get into power, they think they can really do whatever they want to do primarily because they think they are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s either their way or the highway. And that’s why they need to be stopped in November, or else you will not recognize this country after another four years of Obama.

At least black swan events work both ways. Look at it this way, to Obama and his fellow travelers the Tea Party was the ULTIMATE black swan event. They will probably be unbelieving at losing the election.

“Top Economists are shocked that the unprecedented deficit spending has not saved the economy”

“NO ONE expected Catholics to be upset about being forced to perform abortions or be arrested and put in jail in order to practice their faith as they wish”

Everything is a surprise to the Liberal media when it turns out the way the non-liberal majority predicts that it will. And that is the problem. After 3 years of conservatives describing Hopium and leg tingling blind faith in any thing that comes out of Obama’s mouth (without vetting or investigation) as dangerous and risky “government by accident”, the media is beginning to panic, because turn after turn the predictions of the Right “appear” to come true every time. It would be much easier for them to do as some in the media have reluctantly admitted,..that is that Obama has not lived up to the hype,…or worse yet, he is an amateur, a thug, delusional, a liar and he’s in over his head.

The British spies had a saying for propgandists that began to carelessly confuse their misinformation campaign with reality. “They are drinking their own bathwater”. The left has become hopelessly lost in its own labyrinth of spin. As Thomas Sowell likes to portray the left as the “anointed” elites who believe they are educating and leading a nation made up of childlike morons grouped in victim tribes, they justify their disinformation as necessary to convince the ignorant unclean to follow them down paths that they would otherwise not go if they were leveled with.

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it…”

So when any Republican, Fox News analyst, Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, Foreign leader who has his own nations interest to consider, mainstream economist, financial analyst in the private sector, conservative Democrat, average American or other person who does not grab his ankles when Obama speaks,… should any of these people raise any doubts whether Obama’s NEW and unprecedented policies might be an earth shaking success, they are immediately described as ignorant of his special powers, evil for having spoken of his imminence without having the adequate intellectual capacity to comment on his policies, and having been labeled as a seditious dissenter, the suspect is refered to as a tea bagger and flushed down the TV Networks memory hole.

So later when our glorious leader’s core policy achievements turn out to be harmful, unconstitutional, disastrous, or naive pipe dreams that appear to be nothing more than efforts to consolidate power in a bloated Leftist Nanny state, to the untrained eye, they clearly validate and vindicate Obama’s critics.

But to the Left, it is all a big shock. It is in fact a daily alarm clock of shocks and surprises.

We are witnessing something akin to a three way Medieval power struggle between the church of the left, the Power hungry nobility of big government and the rest of us, which means “We the People”. When the press plays the role of painting what Baudrillard described as Hyper-Reality, a fake reality that is supposed to be “more real” than actual reality, you can expect that someone will eventually realize, that reality has a nagging habit of coming back and slapping the living crap out of you for worshipping Simulcra instead of just doing what works, even if it wasn’t your signature revelation.

Thats what made Reagan so refreshing. Keep it Simple. Policy on the USSR, “We win they lose”. Policy on prosperity and recovery, “Get out of the way and let the people work”. On finding the answers to our problems, “Believe in the wisdom of the average American”. Those simple maxims are like Kryptonite to the left, because there is no role for their risky schemes designed to make them feel important and special.

I would love to see the following headline which would be the catch all for all of the above “Surprised” and “No One expected” stories.

“Recent events have convinced the American public that Liberals are not as important as they think they are and are really not very special after all. In fact, they make a lot of mistakes which almost always result in the suffering of people they would never want to be stuck in an elevator with. Republicans make mistakes too, but never when it relates to restricting the ability of the government to acquire more power”

Thanks. After years of studying history, I have occasionally succumbed to a similar prideful arrogance that causes the left to believe that we are so modern, wealthy and sophisticated that we could never experience some of the upheavals and collapses that we study about in Europe in previous centuries. Again, Reagan was so wise and I was wrong to indulge myself. We are but one generation from total oblivion, if we do nothing.

We do not need Nobel winners or Pundits to sprinkle convoluted explanations on our foreheads when the answers are so simple. During the 2008, I couldn’t help but see the similarity in the Hans Christian Anderson folk tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. For Pete’s sake, It’s a children’s story. I looked in to literary opinions online on the meaning of the story and some of the quotes were eerie. One author points out “the swindling weavers are simply insisting that “the value of their labor be recognized apart from its material embodiment”, and that some consider “the ability of some in the tale to see the invisible cloth as ‘a successful enchantment’.

So, some of the Emperor’s subjects actually believed they could see the clothing. Others, including the courtiers saw nothing, but refused to speak out of fear, others took pleasure in knowing that they alone knew there were no clothes and that the lowly subjects ALL were duped, and even the Emperor was duped when the courtier was not. I imagine Joe Biden in this category. He knows its a farce and can’t resist trying to wave his flag as part of the cleverness.

Axelrod was quoted by EJ Dionne long before the 2008 campaign as inventing the Obama strategy of being on both sides if not all sides of all issues. He derided Clinton’s third way, DLC strategy and fashioned Obama as being on both sides and then daring the media to call his bluff. That makes Axelrod and his handlers the swindlers, Obama who is quite clever, but a victim of his own legendary vanity, and Biden who not necessarily as clever, he is an observer of Obama’s self deception and is indifferent to it, because like the courtiers it is a vehicle for him to ride the wave of the clean and articulate one.

In 2009, the GOP, like the murmuring subjects in the crowd was inept at exposing the farce. Like the child in the crowd, it took amateurs, the Tea Party to cry out, “Hey, the man who lives in the White House might possibly be the most unprepared, inept and dangerous person ever to have held the office at a time of incredible consequence”.

The first voices that spoke up and challenged Obama’s policies were mocked as ugly ducklings, but eventually after being proven correct in their predictions emerged as Black Swans. …Another Anderson folk tale.

Under normal circumstances, I ascribe to the philosophy of never attributing to malice what can be explained by stupidity. With the Obama administration I find myself reversing the order. I have never in my life, and I’m over 50, seen as maliciously destructive an administration as this one, and yes, I’m including Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.

716877 181104 An fascinating discussion is worth comment. I believe which you need to write a lot more on this subject, it may well not be a taboo topic but typically folks are not enough to speak on such topics. Towards the next. Cheers 211781